Beef’s Bracketology, January 16 Edition

It’s with much dread that I put the first NCAA Beef Bracketology together. Not because I didn’t want to do it for another year or because I knew that Northern Iowa wouldn’t be anywhere near consideration, but just for the vast amount of work it takes/took to get the first edition ready. There’s a lot more numbers to go over when doing NCAA basketball bracketology as compared to FCS bracketology. First and foremost, there’s 351(347 eligible) compared to 124(of which, only 95 are in the at-large pool). It took almost a complete day of my two days off this week, but it’s done.

There will probably be updates every Monday or Tuesday until Selection Sunday, save for acts of God, Mother Nature or alien invasion. Updating numbers is a much easier process. Adding or dropping contenders is also a less tedious procedure, now that the vast legwork has been completed.

Looking at this week’s bracket and RiSK Rankings, there’s a clear dominance from the six power conferences. Of the 36 at-large bids available, the mid- and low-majors account for only five of them. There are three knocking on the door, though two of the final four bids belong to this group also. So in the immediate future, there’s not a lot of hope for this number climbing much higher than six.

The multi-bid conferences look like this…

Atlantic Coast…9

Southeastern…7

Big XII…6

Big East…6

Big Ten…5

Pacific Twelve…4

American…3

Conference USA…2

Mountain West…2

West Coast…2

The last four teams in, with byes are: Maryland, Syracuse, Southern California, Alabama

The last four teams in, playing in play-in games are: Texas, Western Kentucky, Houston, UCLA

Linked below is the projected bracket as it would sit today. Also below are the current RiSK Rankings. RiSK is an equal, three-part compilation of each contenders RPI(R), Sagarin(S) and KenPom(K) Rankings. There are numerous teams not shown who may actually have better numbers than some of those shown, but many of those towards the bottom of the RiSK are one of the top two teams from conferences that will only receive one bid(its automatic). They are included because they’re being tracked for those automatic bids. Teams will appear and fall off fluidly until mid-February, when the contenders are more concrete. This RiSK Ranking is not an end-all as far as selection or seeding, but it seems to be a pretty solid and usual tool.